Veena Sheshadri - India: A to Z

for Aadhaar

What makes you uniquely India? The fact that you are reading India: A to Z? Good reason that, but theres an even better oneyour 12-digit individual identification number called Aadhaar!

Everything if youre Indian and have an Aadhaar number! Thats right, your-digit individual identification number issued by the unique identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will serve ss a proof of your identity and address, anywhere In India. Each Aadhaar number is unique to an individual and will remain valid for life.

Why did the UIDAI (a part of the Planning Commission of India) come up with this idea? Well, since we have so many difference proofs of identity, they felt that every permanent Indian resident should have a single source of identity verification. And so, in February 2009, they launched a project to issue a unique number linked to a residents demographic and biometric information. The number can be used as proof of identity and will provide access to a host of benefits and services in banking, telecommunication, processing of passport applications, etc. Nandan Nilekani, former co-chairman of Infosys Technologies, was appointed the first chairman of UIDAI in June 2009.

The Aadhaar number project is the largest personal identification programme the world has ever witnessed. Over 1.2 billion people are eligible to receive an Aadhaar card. The India government will spend approximately Rs 113 person who enrols to get an Aadhaar card. That adds up to about Rs 1,35,76,80,00,000 (13,576 crore rupees) if all of Indias 1.2 billion residents sign up for the card!

for Adivasi

Little is known of their history, but what we do know for a fact is that the Adivasi people were among the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent.

Adivasi is the collective name used foe the many indigenous peoples of India. The term Adivasi comes from the Hindi word adi which means from the beginning and vasi which means inhabitant. The word was coined in the 1930s to create a sense of identity among the various native peoples of India.

If they were among the first residents of our country, why were they pushed to the outer edges of society? According to historians, it appears that their land was encroached upon by Indo-Aryan tribes some 3000 years ago. The Adivasi people were driven away into the mountains and hill areas after these invasions. As a result they underwent major changes in their traditional ways of life and became vulnerable to economic exploitation.

In 1950, the Constitution of India identified most of these groups as people who required social and economic development. Since that time, the Adivasi people have been officially known as Scheduled Tribes and have been given many protective provisions. In the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, 7 per cent of the total number of seats are reserved for members of the scheduled tribes.

The Adivasi people are not a homogeneous group. There are believed to be over 200 distinct peoples speaking more than 100 languages. According to a recent census, the Adivasi people constitute 8 per cent of Indias population, which means there are over 84 million of them. A majority of them live in the states of Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and in the North-Eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram. The largest groups of Adivasi people are the Bhil, the Munda and the Santhal.

The Bhils live all over western and central India.